A plan to bring skiing back to Monte San Primo — a mountain overlooking Italy’s Lake Como that was once a popular winter destination for Milanese day-trippers — is moving closer to reality, according to reporting by local newspaper La Provincia di Como this week.
The project has been in the works for several years and has attracted significant controversy. But as of May 2026, local authorities say the paperwork is progressing through the Lombardy regional government and construction could begin before the end of the year.
“The project is moving forward,” said Danilo Bianchi, president of the local Mountain Community and mayor of the nearby village of Magreglio, speaking to La Provincia di Como. “Any criticism is certainly useful, but we do not move from the original intent, which also includes the construction of the baby ski slope. By the end of the year I expect the approval process to be completed and that we can be ready for the start of the work.”
This is not a full ski resort revival. The total budget is €2.16 million ($2.5 million) — a relatively modest sum for mountain infrastructure — split between the Lombardy Region and the local Mountain Community, which will also oversee construction. The plan involves removing the old, derelict ski lifts that have sat unused on the mountainside for years, building new parking areas, improving and securing hiking trails, and creating a water reservoir that will serve two purposes: supplying water for fighting forest fires and feeding a snowmaking system for a small beginner ski slope. That beginner slope — a single, short run for children and first-timers — is the only ski component in the plan.
Monte San Primo is not being reimagined as a competitive ski destination. The vision is a year-round mountain tourism area above Bellagio, one of Italy’s most visited lakeside towns, with hiking in summer and a modest ski offer in winter.
Environmental groups have been pushing back against the project for years, and their opposition has not changed. A coalition of environmental organizations has been particularly vocal against the snowmaking component, arguing that spending public money on artificial snow infrastructure at 1,682 meters above sea level — an elevation where natural snowfall is already unreliable and getting less reliable every decade — makes no economic or environmental sense.
The Lombardy Region has so far declined to respond publicly to their criticism, according to a separate report in La Provincia from the same week.
The environmentalists’ argument is straightforward: Monte San Primo is too low. The southern Alps are warming faster than the global average, and resorts at this altitude have been losing viable ski days for decades. Building new snowmaking infrastructure now, critics say, is doubling down on a model that the climate is already making obsolete.
Supporters of the project emphasize that the plans for revival include a year-round plan and argue that the environmental impact of the snowmaking at Monte San Primo with the use of current state-of-the-art snowmaking facilities will have a smaller carbon footprint than Milanese families traveling further afield to teach their kids to ski. However, activists object to the construction of the year-round amenities such as a summer luge with carpet as well. They highlight that any construction on the mountain would disrupt the pristine mountain environment which had been reclaimed over the last four decades by nature. The construction of a larger parking lot alone would require the removal of a small forest in the area. They see an alternative in bringing plastic slopes or indoor slopes to urban areas, rather than disrupting pristine mountain environments.
Monte San Primo rises to 1,682 meters (5,518 feet) above Bellagio — the famously picturesque village at the fork of Lake Como’s two arms, about an hour from Milan. The mountain was a popular ski destination in the 1950s and 60s, when day-trippers from the city would make the trip for weekends on the slopes. As snowfall thinned and the infrastructure aged, the resort gradually fell out of use and the lifts were abandoned.
The current plan is a deliberate scaling back of ambition. Rather than attempting to compete with higher-altitude resorts in the Alps, local authorities are betting on a mixed-use mountain destination — trails, nature, and a small ski component — that can attract visitors across the seasons.
Whether a €2.16 million ($2.5 million) investment in a beginner ski slope and a snowmaking reservoir justifies the environmental concerns is the question now sitting with regional authorities. Local leaders say they expect an answer by the end of 2026.